The Nairobi-based UN Environment Programme (UNEP) said more than 70 percent of small cetaceans, including dolphins, porpoises and small whales, are at risk of being caught in fishing nets, while smaller numbers are threatened by dam building, sewage dumping and underwater military sonar operations.

Tough new protective steps must be taken to ensure the survival of at least eight species of small cetaceans, it said in a report presented to parties to the Convention of Migratory Species (CMS) at UNEP headquarters.

"Small cetaceans are amongst the world's most well-loved and charismatic creatures on the planet," UNEP executive director Klaus Toepfer said in a statement.

"Sadly, these qualities alone cannot protect them from a wide range of threats, so I fully endorse measures to strengthen their conservation through the CMS and other agreements," he said.

His comments followed the release of the report on 71 small cetacean species that found many increasingly at risk from fishing nets, being harvested for food or shark bait and noise and environmental pollution.

Particularly threatened by fishermen are the Atlantic Spotted dolphin, the Pygmy Sperm whale, the Blainville's beaked whale and the Hector's dolphin, the world's rarest marine mammal with fewer than 4,000 in existence, it said.

Three species are at risk from noise pollution created by naval sonar tests that have been linked to mass strandings and deaths of Cuvier's and Blainville's whales in the Ionian, Caribbean and Mediterrean seas, it said.

The report also said high concentrations of chemical pollutants in the Arctic Ocean were causing gastric ulcers and higher rates of parasitic infections in the Beluga, Pygmy killer and Narwhal whales.

Delegates from 90 countries have gathered at the CMS conference in Kenya this week and have already been party to the creation of an avian flu early warning system and a pact to save West Africa's dwindling elephant population.

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